Oct 1, 2022–Jan 29, 2023
Liljevalchs
Stockholm, SE
Curated by Clara Åhlvik and Magnus af Petersens
The Nobel Prize Museum’s exhibition entitled Life Eternal at Liljevalchs art gallery brings together science, art, and cultural history while showing different approaches to eternity, exploring the crucial issues of our era and offering hope for the future. The exhibition features Laura Splan's Doilies (2004), a series of digitally fabricated lace sculptures depicting the structure of viruses including SARS, HIV, and Influenza. Created in 2004 in response to the first SARS coronavirus outbreak, Doilies explores the “domestication” of biomedical imagery in the quotidian landscape. “Life Eternal” is an unusually boundary-breaching exhibition that sheds light on the crucial issues of our era. The exhibition at Liljevalchs will be the Nobel Prize Museum’s largest ever in Stockholm and can be regarded as a prelude to the new Nobel Center that will be built at Slussen. Can we outwit death? That question has been asked for as long as humans have roamed the earth, but modern research shows that the question of eternal life should be viewed not only from as a religious and philosophical matter, but also as a biological possibility. But while we humans are developing more and more advanced methods to prolong life, for the first time in history we ourselves have the capacity to extinguish all life on earth. Nuclear weapons are not the only threat. Our way of life is destroying the climate and diminishing the chances of future life, day by day. The aim of the exhibition ‘Life Eternal’ is to reflect on issues related to eternity, and thus also the future. It is more urgent than ever to find new ways of talking about how we should continue our journey. In these discussions, the Nobel Prize can play a key role.
The Nobel Prize Museum’s exhibition entitled Life Eternal at Liljevalchs art gallery brings together science, art, and cultural history while showing different approaches to eternity, exploring the crucial issues of our era and offering hope for the future. The exhibition features Laura Splan's Doilies (2004), a series of digitally fabricated lace sculptures depicting the structure of viruses including SARS, HIV, and Influenza. Created in 2004 in response to the first SARS coronavirus outbreak, Doilies explores the “domestication” of biomedical imagery in the quotidian landscape. “Life Eternal” is an unusually boundary-breaching exhibition that sheds light on the crucial issues of our era. The exhibition at Liljevalchs will be the Nobel Prize Museum’s largest ever in Stockholm and can be regarded as a prelude to the new Nobel Center that will be built at Slussen. Can we outwit death? That question has been asked for as long as humans have roamed the earth, but modern research shows that the question of eternal life should be viewed not only from as a religious and philosophical matter, but also as a biological possibility. But while we humans are developing more and more advanced methods to prolong life, for the first time in history we ourselves have the capacity to extinguish all life on earth. Nuclear weapons are not the only threat. Our way of life is destroying the climate and diminishing the chances of future life, day by day. The aim of the exhibition ‘Life Eternal’ is to reflect on issues related to eternity, and thus also the future. It is more urgent than ever to find new ways of talking about how we should continue our journey. In these discussions, the Nobel Prize can play a key role.
Anna Dumitriu, Andrea Galvani, Ann Lislegaard, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Christian Partos, Dana Sederowsky, Éva Mag, Fredrik Paulsen, Jone Kvie, Julian Charrière, Laura Splan, Mark Dion, Mats Hjelm, Moa Israelsson, Niki Lindroth von Bahr, Petra Lindholm, Rineke Dijkstra, Sam Taylor-Johnson, Ulla Wiggen, William Kentridge, Ylva Carlgren and a joint work by John Wynne and Tim Wainwright.
The Nobel Prize shows that ideas can change the world. The courage, creativity and perseverance of the Nobel Laureates inspire us and give us hope for the future. Films, in-depth tours, and artefacts tell the stories of the Laureates and their contributions ‘for the greatest benefit to humankind’. Based on the Nobel Prize’s unique combination of fields – natural sciences, literature and peace – we examine the greatest challenges of our time and show how we can respond to them through science, humanism and collaboration. With our exhibitions, school programmes, lectures and conversations, we at the Nobel Prize Museum strive to engage the public in making a better world.
About Liljevalch's exhibition program is aimed at both the really broad audience and those who are particularly interested in certain artists or art and form directions. Each new art year begins with the well-known jury-judged Spring Salon. Liljevalchs belongs to the City of Stockholm and was inaugurated in 1916 as the first independent and public art gallery for contemporary art in Sweden. The building was designed by architect Carl Bergsten and is located on the scenic Djurgården in Stockholm. Liljevalch Art Gallery is led by Mårten Castenfors.
...Splan swathes scientific observation in elegance. Splan’s creations demand a double take—a second look that reveals the scholarly rigor behind the pretty surface...
...Interdisciplinarity is the foundation on which artist Laura Splan conceives her work...Through her practice, science is moved out of the laboratories while keeping its axioms and experiments present...A number of its mechanisms are paralleled with the cultural dynamics that inhabit our everyday lives, putting a magnifying glass on the interconnections that exist between diverse fields of knowledge...
...A number of contemporary artists are collaborating between medicine and the textile industry, exploring how each discipline can inform the other. Artist Laura Splan in her 2004 project explores the connection between textiles, art and science. Through her work, during the SARS outbreak in 2002–04, she combined art and textiles with technology and medicine. The design of the lace fabric is based on a different structure of the virus (HIV, SARS, Influenza, Herpes). Her project is a reflection on the “softening” of microbial as well as psychological images of cultural anxieties against circulating viruses...
Special thanks to Timo Menke
